How-to Customize Sound Icons and Name

Windows can by default add icons and names to certain devices within the Sound overview of your system. However some devices like headsets (usb) and some HDMI devices are not recognized correctly. Especially when you have many devices a clean overview can be very handy.

Windows gives you the option to customize sound to meet your requirements and wishes, this post will explain how to do that!

Example of a messy Sound overview

Messy Sound

How-to Customize Sound

Customizing the sound overview is very easy and takes only a couple of seconds. First you need to open the sound overview screen of course.

Right-click the sound icon in the taskbar

Select Playback Devices

Double-click the sound device you wish to edit.

You can now change the name, by editing the field above.

To change the icon, click on Change Icon

Change sound output name

[alert-note]You can also repeat these steps for recording devices.[/alert-note]

Example of clean Sound overview

You can customize sound overview in such a way that it’s clear in one look which is what, like below.

2014, 2015 & 2016 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Windows
Yuri specializes in troubleshooting (crash analysis and devices), system resource utilisation and system performance. He is also very interested in Customer Security. Yuri can be found as Windows Community Moderator and Wiki Author on Microsoft Answers and is active on different communities all across the web.

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